Early detection of unintentional block withholding

http://organofcorti.blogspot.ie/2016/02/detecting-unintentional-block.html


1. What is "block withholding"?
In simple terms miner creates a "digest" of information a pool gives her. This "digest" is called a block hash, and it has a numerical value. If this value is less than a particular value the pool accepts it as work and the miner is compensated. If the value is less than another much smaller value, it will create a block that could be accepted by the bitcoin network and added to the block chain.

To make the concept easier to use, the block hash "difficulty" also describes the numerical value of the block hash. Difficulty is inversely proportional to the block hash value, so the smaller the block hash, the larger the difficulty. Most miners are much more familiar with difficulty as a measure of the block hash requirements rather than the actual numerical value, so I'll be using difficulty as the block hash size requirement measure.

This time, Rob interviews Peter Todd - def worth a listen

https://soundcloud.com/the-bitcoin-game/the-bitcoin-game-34-bitcoin-core-dev-peter-todd

Starts with an interesting discussion about empty blocks and mining, between Gavin and Andreas

https://soundcloud.com/mindtomatter/lets-talk-bitcoin-282-bitcoin

RT @oocBlog: New evidence of a transaction fee market?
https://t.co/Iwo1QRTK76 https://t.co/BYzLWrTo0v

Interesting view of the Gartner Hype-cycle over the last 4years.